Here I presume your Linux VM-To-Be-Template has at least VMware Tools installed.
First, I check if I can reach my vRealize Automation 7 appliance using ping
Now download the prep script from your vRA appliance using
wget https://vRealize_VA_Hostname_fqdn:5480/service/software/download/prepare_vra_template.sh
You may have to append
–no-check-certificate
Note: WordPress might display it incorrectly – it is ‘dash dash no dash check dash certificate’
In my environment I have my own CA but my Linux servers aren’t joined to AD to the cert cannot be verified
Now make the script executable
Now execute the script. As this is for vRA – I here select ‘vSphere’ as Cloud Provider
Go through the prompts ensuring they reflect your environment
Here I have just a minimal installation with two servers
- vra7-prod-vra.vspherelab.co.uk
- vRA Appliance
- vra7-prod-iaas.vspherelab.co.uk
- IaaS Windows Server
Also this server is a fresh minimal CentOS build – there is no Java installed, so I will select this, too.
I select NOT to check the certificate. The Linux server is not joined to my domain and the certificates are coming from my internal CA – so I need to ignore that
Confirm your selections
Watch progress bars for the install of Java ..
.. the Gugent (Guest Agent)
.. software agent (for App Services)
.. and check that the agent registers successfully with the Manager Service on the IaaS server.
The install should hopefully complete successfully
The install SHOULD have pulled the proper certificate down from your IaaS server.
You can, to make sure, either check the content of
/usr/share/gugent/cert.pem
or simply upload your certificate to the same location ‘to make sure’
Here you can see that I renamed the cert.pem to cert.pem_old and uploaded my certificate rui.pem as cert.pem
Before we can shut down the server, we still need to prepare the server for customization. This is a procedure you have to do in any case, vRA or not vRA, but for the sake of completion I just going to show it anyway.
First of, delete permanent udev rules
Remove the MAC address (HWADDR) and UUID from your network script. Here it is called ifcfg-eno16780032
Yours might be different. Older CentOS distros will call it ifcfg-eth0 etc.
Now shutdown the server
Ensure the VM is set to RedHat 7 rather than CentOS 7 – otherwise Guest Customization might not work properly
Before creating a Blueprint, ensure that the data collection is up to date. Either wait for the schedule or run a collection manually
You can find my article how to create a Blueprint HERE. Here you can see that I created a bunch of Gugent related Custom Properties
You can find an explanation what each property does HERE but essentially you can see the most important one
- VirtualMachine.Sofware0.ScriptPath
You can see that the script I want to run after provisioning is called
- /home/date.sh
All it does is getting the current date and copies it into a file called
- /home/date.txt
Now deploy a VM from this template. Once finished, you should be able to see above script output (or whatever you have configured)
To get more details and to ensure the agent is working, have a look in the log
- /usr/share/gugent/GuestAgent.log
You should see something similar
That’s it – you now installed, configured and tested the Guest Agent for vRA (Gugent) on a Linux Clone 🙂